It's Starting To Get Ugly

So my posts are getting progressively whiney as this routine grinds on.   I've asked E to write a guest post, maybe that will lighten the mood around here, if he gets around to it. 

Today in class, we were complaining about our homework load, as usual.  I should mention now that most of us are losing steam.  It's not that we're not turning our homework in on time; it's just that we're not forcing ourselves to memorize the damn vocab every night like we did at the beginning of the program.  So anyway, we're in class, and C says something brilliant, he says, "We can write homework in America." 

Fifty points and a high five. 

We can totally learn to read and write in America.  I can go home and sit on my American couch and do Mandarin homework (i.e., word and grammar games) until I'm blue in the face.  What I can't do in America is talk to and listen to Mandarin speakers all day long.  That's what we should be doing here.  We shouldn't be having to miss out on opportunities to talk to Chinese people because of our homework load. 

All you people that are telling me, "oh but JP, I think reading and writing is important."  All of you, shut you rotten mouths.  Just shut it.  I don't give a crap about what you think.  I'm in China surrounded by a billion Chinese people, but I don't have time to talk to them because I'm doing stupid multiple choice homework.  The best is "choose the sentence that is grammatically incorrect."  What kind of idiot would want an L2 student to focus on grammatically incorrect sentences?  Just because we study some correct structures does NOT mean we have a sense of whether a NEW sentence is grammatically correct or not.  What bullshit.  (If you want to argue this with me, save yourself the effort and just punch yourself in your cavity-ridden death-smelling mouth.). 

So our fourth class of the day (four in a row!) is our newspaper elective, and most of us have just made the decision to not prepare for it.  We oughtta, but we don't, we're to busy trying to identify grammatically incorrect sentences.  So today, the teacher tells us that next Wednesday, we have to make an oral presentation.  Here's the schedule:  Wednesday, oral presentation.  Thursday, review.  Friday, giant final exam, written and oral.  Oh yes, they expect us to go to dinner with them on Thursday night. 

The class is visibly shaken by this, and one classmate says, why can't we do it on Tuesday or Monday?  When the hell are we supposed to prepare for the exams?   The teacher tells us some bullshit about how then it wouldn't make sense to continue having class once the oral is done, and then we all pouted through the vocabulary.  Later she offered to talk to the academic director.  The guy next to me just said, I don't care, I'm not preparing. 

We finished the class and went to lunch.  On the walk back, the teacher reminded us that water is shut off starting at 9 pm tonight, and won't come on again until 8 am.  Teachers will not shower, but Chinese people shower at night anyway.  Americans shower in the morning.  Aw who cares.  I wonder if teachers flush toilets in the morning.  One classmate suggested they should delay class for an hour, so we can get clean (he runs every morning).  Fat chance. 

Oh, and when I got back to the dorm, there's a sign on the door that says "tonight's meeting is still on at 9pm in 113."  First of all, what meeting?  Second, 9 pm is serious homework time. 

When it comes time to write an evaluation, no one is safe.